Piermont
Joia, 15, adopted Gypsy this spring through a program that aims to find good homes for the wild creatures, which are managed by the Bureau of Land Management on millions of acres of public rangeland.
Extreme Youth Mustang Makeover gives young people 100 days to gentle and ground train their horses before they meet up for a competition showcasing their progress. Participants from New England and New York competed earlier this month in Topsfield, Mass. But first, they trained their new horses.
This spring, Joia, her mother and grandfather drove to Massachusetts to pick up Gypsy. At that time, she had a number, 9760, but not a name; the government uses “freeze marks,” created on wild mustangs and burros’ necks with an iron chilled in liquid nitrogen, to identify them.
Captured in drought-plagued Nevada, her horse had been taken to Utah, where she was kept on acres and acres of enclosed area with other mustangs, and provided with hay and water, Joia said.
But she hadn’t been handled.
“No one did anything with her,” said Joia, a rising sophomore at St. Johnsbury Academy who lives at Moonstruck Farm with her mother and one of her two older sisters.
Training a mustang sounds very romantic, and it is, but the time-consuming process is “not for sissies,” said Joia’s mother, Lisa Knapton. And the requirements for the horse’s housing were “pretty daunting.”
Family and friends pitched in to build Gypsy’s pen according to the specifications, Knapton said. At 6 feet tall, it’s “like a fortress.”
Joia said she’s spent hours every day working with Gypsy, who is probably a year or 18 months old. “If you adopt a mustang, you don’t have a social life anymore.”
Nonetheless, they’d do it again.
“We’re training people. It’s kind of what makes us tick,” said Knapton, whose grew up with horses on her family’s farm in Henniker, N.H. “I’m smitten with the idea of rescuing these horses.”
“I’ve learned so much about myself and our relationship,” she said. And she’s “in awe” of Joia’s patience.
The process has been sobering at times. They recently traveled to a farm in southern New Hampshire for “orphaned” mustangs whose previous owners had struggled to train them and then given up on them, Knapton said. “It’s just kind of sad that some of the mustangs get left again.”
At first, she didn’t know what to expect from Gypsy, Joia said. Could she do “crazy stunts” with her, or would she need to stick to the basics? She started out slow, by necessity. For the first 10 days, Gypsy wouldn’t let Joia get near her. But eventually, she began to eat apples out of her hand and allowed Joia to touch her.
“I was so relieved,” Joia said. “Some of the other trainers couldn’t touch their horses a month in.”
Gypsy had never been groomed before, but soon, she was so comfortable that she started falling asleep when she brushed her shoulders and neck, Joia said. “Unsnarling her mane and tail took at least three weeks.”
And the training went well.
Surprisingly, unlike her 5-year-old paint, Cricket, Gypsy had arrived “desensitized and bombproof,” Joia said. The calmest horse she’s ever had, Gypsy loves to learn and work, “so it’s really fun to teach her new things.”
In the months leading up to the competition, Joia turned often to an online message board used by many of the youth trainers, who shared what had worked for them and traded suggestions. And when she got stuck, she didn’t have to look far for answers.
“I like having Mom to help me, because she’s trained a lot of horses,” said Joia, who wants to be a horse trainer. Her experience with Gypsy has already led to work: she’s currently training three Morgan weanlings on a farm in Fairlee.
Initially, the family’s other two horses, Cricket and Tanquerey, picked on Gypsy to assert dominance, Joia said. But now, to her relief, “they’re best friends.”
In early August, they traveled back down to Massachusetts to spend a weekend competing with other young trainers taking part in the Extreme Mustang Makeover challenge. While she’s not much into competitions, Joia said, it was good to have the experience for both her and Gypsy to get away and see what’s happening in other places. It wasn’t without its stressors. During one of the events, Gypsy refused to move.
“It was so embarrassing,” said Joia, who started to cry. Yet, she put the horse’s behavior in context, hugged Gypsy, and talked to her encouragingly.
It was late in the evening, past when Gypsy is usually fed, and the horse was hungry and tired after a long day, said Joia, who received the event’s sportsmanship award. And it was Gypsy’s first time in front of a big crowd.
“It wasn’t her fault that she was scared or nervous,” and she probably sensed Joia’s own nervousness, she said. “I had to take a deep breath and be with my horse.”
Back home, after the competition, they put Gypsy out to pasture with the other horses for a well-deserved break. That moment was gratifying for Knapton, who said she “couldn’t wait to see this little girl be free again.”
And Gypsy’s been pretty happy, Joia said.
“I don’t think she’s ever had a full field of grass before.”
Aimee Caruso can be reached at acaruso@vnews.com or 603-727-3210.